In recent years, cell culturing techniques for culturing cells and regenerative medical techniques utilizing cultured cells have been drawing attention. One of the important operations in cell culturing is cell subculturing. Generally speaking, cell subculturing includes the steps of: cleaning cells in a culture vessel; detaching the cells from the culture vessel; collecting cell suspension from the culture vessel; and seeding the cells collected from the cell suspension in a new culture vessel. In the cell subculturing, the step of detaching the cells from the culture vessel is one of the important steps since the detachment of the cells is a major factor that affects the amount of cells to be collected, the degree of damage to the cells, an engraftment rate thereafter, etc. The step of detaching the cells from the culture vessel includes the work of: treating the cells by means of, for example, a proteolytic enzyme such that the cells become easily detachable from the culture vessel; then pipetting by an operator; hitting the side and the bottom part of the culture vessel several times by the operator; and intensely shaking the culture vessel by the operator. The work of hitting the side and the bottom part of the culture vessel is called tapping.
Although the tapping was conventionally performed manually, there has been a proposal to mechanically automate the tapping. For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a device for detaching cells from a culture vessel by repeatedly applying horizontal impact force to the culture vessel. This device includes: a placing stand, on which a flat culture vessel can be placed; and a vibration exciter configured to apply a pulse-like impact shock to the culture vessel. The vibration exciter includes a plunger configured to advance or retract by means of a solenoid. A hitting part configured to come into contact with the side of the culture vessel is provided on the distal end of the plunger.